Taken away from us forty years ago today, John Lennon remains the most complex of Beatles. With this anniversary of his murder, he’s been dead for as many years as he was alive, which is a surreal indicator of how large his presence has been well after he’s been gone. I wonder what he might…
I said “Mama, he’s crazy and he scares meBut I want him by my sideThough he’s wild and he’s badAnd sometimes just plain madI need him to keep me satisfied”– Cowboy Junkies, Misguided Angel I saw a Facebook post the other day that broke my heart. A longtime friend who I view as a kid…
I had a conversation with a friend over the weekend about Elton John. She was surprised that I was a bit ambivalent about his music. The fact is I don’t love Elton John/Bernie Taupin’s catalog the way I love, say Jackson Browne or Billy Joel’s catalogs. Sure, he’s iconic and has some great, great songs,…
October makes me gravitate to a certain style of music. I grow more reflective and pensive as we move past harvest time and into a time of frosts and falling leaves, and my playlist tends to reflect this mood. Van Morrison, U2, Steely Dan all start appearing more than they did in the warmer months…
Eddie Van Halen passed away yesterday. And so it is that another chunk of my childhood drifts away into the otherworld. I was never much of a guitar player, but it isn’t hard to see Eddie Van Halen playing his guitar Frankenstein and see a virtuoso at work. I suppose there are other guitar players…
“If you think it is ever warranted to stop on the path of further understanding, you are very far from the truth. The life which we received was given to us not that we might just admire it, but that we should ever look for new truth hidden from us.” – Leo Tolstoy, quoting John…
I had a professor in college who pointed out that the greatest books in history had great opening lines that set the tone for the everything that followed. He pointed out the Bible as the most unambiguous example of setting the tone for everything else that follows, but you can’t forget the brilliance of Homer…
“We can park the van and walk to town Find the cheapest bottle of wine that we could find And talk about the road behind How getting lost is not a waste of time Le Bois d’Amour will take us home And in a moment we will sing as the forest sleeps” – Jack Johnson,…
It is yourself you seek In a long rage, Scanning through light and darkness Mirrors, the page, Where should reflected be Those eyes and that thick hair, That passionate look, that laughter. You should appear Within the book, or doubled, Freed, in the silvered glass; Into all other bodies Yourself should pass. The glass does…
There is a scene in The Secret Life of Walter Mitty where Walter Mitty looks at a picture of Sean O’Connell. Walter is the daydreaming, play life straight ahead guy, Sean is the bold, adventurous photographer who masterfully dances on the edge between chaos and order. Walter looks at the picture of Sean looking back…
